Frank H. McClung Museum, University of Tennessee

ADMISSION:
Admission to the McClung Museum is always FREE.

MUSEUM HOURS

The Museum is OPEN:

The Museum is CLOSED:

* New Year's Day
* Easter Sunday
* Memorial Day
* Fourth of July
* Labor Day
* Thanksgiving Day
* Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

The McClung Museum is a general museum with collections in anthropology, archaeology, decorative arts, local history, and natural history. The exhibits document ways of life, cultural trends, and technologies from prehistoric times to the present day, and showcase much of Tennessee's past -- its geology, history, art, and culture. The McClung Museum is a special place -- a place of discovery, a place to learn about the world around us.

As a part of the University of Tennessee, the Museum supports and participates in the University's mission to serve the state, region, and nation through scholarship, teaching, artistic creation, professional practice, and public service.

The professionalism and high caliber of the Museum are reflected in its accreditation by the American Association of Museums. In fact, the McClung Museum is one of only 12 museums in Tennessee to be so recognized.

I invite you to visit the Museum and to enjoy the many experiences we offer. As Lewis, a 4th grader, wrote to us: "It is the best museum in the world."

Exhibition

Continents Collide: The Appalachians and the Himalayas
January 14 - May 20

Members reception on Friday, January 13 from 5-7 pm.

Curated by Professor and Distinguished Scientist Robert D. Hatcher, Jr. and Assistant Professor Micah Jessup, both from UT's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the formation of mountain ranges and the forces that continually alter them. Our own beautiful landscapes of East Tennessee and western North Carolina, part of the Appalachian Mountains, whose genesis was more than 250 million years ago, is one focus of the exhibit; the other is the striking and rugged Himalaya Mountains, the much younger and still rising result of tectonic movements, the global effects of which we learn about often in the news.

Introducing the subject in the gallery will be a ten-minute video, produced by award-winning producer Steve Dean (the Heartland Series) and featuring views of a number of sites in the Blue Ridge and Smokies sections of the Appalachians as well as original images of Himalayan locales and the Tibetan plateau. The dynamics of plate tectonics and processes of erosion are explained in animated segments.

Breathtaking as the surface topography may be, the exhibit will also delve into the structure of the respective ranges, as that is where the keys to the how and the why may be found. Three-dimensional maps, video animations, and of course, rocks will show visitors how we know what we know, and perhaps give viewers a new way to look at the global world as well as the landscape around them. The past, the present, and the tectonic future await.

The Museum is grateful to the sponsors of Continents Collide: The Appalachians and the Himalayas, including UTK Ready for the World International and Intercultural Awareness Initiative, The Trust Company, Cobble Family Foundation, C. Howard Capito, and Robert S. Young.